Sister Mary Rose loved her brownies

During my novitiate years, I baked ... a lot.  Baking therapy has always been a good coping mechanism for me.  The beauty of living at east coast groovy sister hq for the majority of my novitiate years was that I had a ready made audience for my baking therapy.  I baked cookies for the maintenance staff, cakes for the elderly sisters next door, and brownies for Sister Mary Rose.

Sister Mary Rose was a lovely (and somewhat mischievous) Sister who lived in the infirmary next door to the novitiate.  Each day she would write little jokes on the white board in the pantry to entertain the Sisters and staff as they got their morning cup of coffee.  She was also deeply prayerful, faithfully taking her walker into the chapel for daily office, liturgy, and just to visit with Jesus for a while.

While we were living next door as novices, we were invited to join the Sisters for their Sunday afternoon meal each week.  Most times, we would bring dessert.  I had discovered a brownie recipe (which, truth be told, comes mostly from a box mix) for triple chocolate brownies.  The first week I made them, Sister Mary Rose wheeled her walker over to the table where we were sitting and said, dramatically, "Which one of you made these DELICIOUS brooowwwnies." (She was born in Brooklyn so add the accent for full effect).  I confessed.  She smiled, winked, and walked away.

From that day forward, she was always sure to let me know how much she appreciated it when the dessert selection included the triple chocolate brownies.  Even when it didn't, she'd politely thank me but tell me it was nothing like those brownies.  After I left New Jersey to start ministry in Seattle, whenever I would come back to east coast groovy sister hq for a meeting she'd be sure to stop by and tell me how much she missed me .... and my brownies.

Well, Sister Mary Rose passed away on Sunday at the age of 92. As I read her obituary, I remembered that her baptismal name was Susan.  We'd bonded over that one day ... the fact that she's a Susan turned Mary Rose and that I was baptized a Susan Rose.

I found the little essay on our website that she wrote on the occasion of her 70th Jubilee a few years back.  Here's an excerpt, typical of her mix of class and mischief:

My seventy years in religious life have made me strong as stone and fragile as a rose. I entered from Brooklyn in 1936 and continue to appreciate the beauty of religious life. ... Now that I am older and a retiree, I experience slow motion at times. I depend much on God's grace. My goal is to live and die in peace. Only this lends meaning to my life and death. Since this year celebrates the Jubilee Sabbath, the following quote from Sabbath Presence best describes what I strive for as a Sister of St. Joseph of Peace, “ . . . A relationship with God, with others, with the created world and with the inner self.” 

Goodbye Mary Rose.  Enjoy the brownies in heaven.  I hear they are all you can eat.

Baking Retreat

The one downside to my current living situation is that I don't have ready access to a kitchen. You see, I"m living at our Province Headquarters with 25+ other Sisters - many of them elderly. We are very fortunate to have a wonderful kitchen staff that keeps us happily fed with lots of yummy (and mostly healthy) creations. In fact, they've even been braving our snow and ice these past few days to come to work. The head cook came with a week's worth of clothing and has been staying here with us through the storms!

So, how is this a downside you ask? Well, the only downside to being incredibly spoiled is that it means that our kitchen is a commercial kitchen and not available for puttering around in and/or the occasional baking extravaganza. Regular readers of the blog might remember that I find baking to be a very meditative exercise. I especially enjoy baking around the Christmas season.

What to do? I'd come up with the perfect solution to my dilemma, and reserved our vacation house on a lake about 45 minutes away for Friday & Saturday. My plan was to hole up in this cozy abode all by my lonesome and bake up a storm inside the vacation house kitchen. Of course, it turned out that we had this series of real storms come up outside.

Luckily, two things converged to make my baking retreat possible. A) The snow/ice stopped coming down for about a 36 hour period which coincided exactly with my planned trip to the Lake House and B) the car I'm driving these days happens to be all wheel drive and is equipped with all season tires that work in the snow.

I came back this afternoon after my 36 hour baking retreat. I listened to Christmas music, baked chocolate chip cookies (my favorite), cranberry almond biscotti, and gingerbread people, and generally enjoyed my alone time. This morning of course I cleaned up the giant floury mess that I made of the lake house kitchen, and returned home just ahead of the next round of storms.

It looks like we might be snowbound for a few days. Good thing I've got some yummy treats to share with the Sisters!

cooookies

I've been baking batches of chocolate chip cookies to share at our General Chapter later this month. There's something meditative for me about baking chocolate chip cookies. Perhaps why I found this article in today's NYT so interesting!

Perfection? Hint: It’s Warm and Has a Secret

making time

Life can be very busy. I remember in my past life, when I was a glorified bureaucrat by day and peace & justice/church geek by night, I would often feel frazzled and overwhelmed by how much there was to do.

I discovered that one way to feel less overwhelmed was to make a commitment to personal daily prayer. Somehow spending time with the big guy in the morning and evening made everything else a bit easier in between.

Another thing I discovered was that it's important for me to make time for me. While I exhibit many extroverted qualities, I am at heart an introvert. When I'm super busy and overwhelmed, I need time to just be with me. So, at the suggestion of my old spiritual director, I started scheduling "ME" time into my very busy schedule. Literally, I'd write myself into my calendar at least one weeknight or weekend day each week. That way, when someone asked if I was available for X,Y, or Z, I could honestly say that I had an appointment. They didn't need to know that the appointment was with someone named Susan Francois!

Somehow, in my transition to this new life, I forgot about that little trick (personal prayer still does wonders though). The past few weeks, I've been feeling a bit overwhelmed and busy with everything there is to balance - full time ministry, quality time with my sister housemates, homework for an online scripture class I'm taking, groovy sister meetings and activities, a smattering of social engagements .... I'm sure you have your own comparable list.

As I say, I was feeling overwhelmed and then I remembered .... I haven't scheduled any "ME" time in a long time! So, I reviewed my schedule for the week, made a few adjustments (which included rescheduling a very understanding friend), and wrote my own name on the calendar entry for today. It's been good - renewing plus productive - and the day's not even over! I even managed to bake a batch of chocolate chip cookies which is always a relaxing enterprise for me.

I think I need to reinstate "ME" time as I continue on this journey. I think its a very important element to my sanity and the elusive thing called balance.

Happy Easter

Easter Greetings to all my bloggy friends. I am now safely back home in Jersey City. I start back to work tomorrow. I had a wonderful 10 days away, the first week at west coast groovy sister hq in Bellevue, Washington and the last few days at St Walburga Monastery in Elizabeth, NJ where I joined one of my fellow novices for a Holy Week Retreat.

The liturgy at the monastery was wonderful for Triduum. This morning I was invited to read at liturgy and read this reading from St Paul's Letter to the Corinthians:

Brothers and sisters:
Do you not know that a little yeast leavens all the dough?
Clear out the old yeast,
so that you may become a fresh batch of dough,
inasmuch as you are unleavened.
For our paschal lamb, Christ, has been sacrificed.
Therefore, let us celebrate the feast,
not with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and wickedness,
but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

I love this imagery, although personally, I have a bad history with yeast. I love to bake, but have yet to master any recipes that include yeast, with the exception of bagels. My theory is that the yeast, as a living organism, can sense my fear. Yes, dear friends, I am afraid of yeast. I last tried to make a yeast bread two Christmases ago. It was an utter disaster.

Perhaps I should take lesson from the women at the tomb, who were fearful yet overjoyed. Given my history with yeast (and this can be extrapolated to a general life lesson), I will most likely have some fear as I forge ahead and try new things. But just because I'm afraid, doesn't mean that I can't be overjoyed as well, and perhaps the joy will balance out the fear. It's a thought!

Well, those are my random thoughts this Easter sunday afternoon. Hope all is well in your respective necks of the woods! I should be back to more regular posting over the next few days ....

Peace,
Susan

baking analogy

Last night I baked some holiday sugar cookies. This morning I baked a pumpkin pie for our Christmas Eve Dinner. Both experiences got me thinking ...

The cookie dough doesn't become a cookie until it goes into the heat of the oven ... the heat causes the cookies to cook, puff up and reach their state of cookiness.

Likewise, the pie goes into the oven all liquidey. You turn the heat up high to settle it, and then turn it down so that it has a long slow cook to becoming the pumpkin pie you dream it can be.

At prayer this morning, I had a random thought. Both baking processes are analogies for the experience of discernment, particularly in the context of the novitiate.

It's often said that the novitiate experience has a hot house or pressure cooker element to it. The heat is turned up, you come to terms with yourself and your relationship to God and community. I think I prefer the baking analogy!

That's your random thought for the day. Hope you all have a wonderful Christmas Eve!

Friday Five ... Interviews

Today's Revgalblogpal Friday Five is on the subject of interviews (the job seeking kind).

1. What was the most memorable interview you ever had?

Egads! Memorable because it was horrible! The year after college I lived in Switzerland as a nanny while I figured out what to do with my life. When I returned to Portland, I spent the summer temping while I frantically job hunted and still pondered said question. I seemed to be constantly the 2nd or 3rd choice for horrid jobs that I didn't really want anyway and was constantly going on interviews. The memorable interview in question however was with a coalition of neighborhood associations. There were no less than TEN people on the interview panel, all sitting on the other side of a long table. The room was extremely hot. They all had glasses of water in front of them, but offered me none. My chair was shorter than theirs and close to toppling over. I'm sure it's my imagination adding on details after the years, but I swear their was something like a spotlight pointing at me. Interview? Or interrogation? Oh, and THEY started sniping at each other instead of asking me questions! That was one job I was happy not to get.

2. Have you ever been the interviewer rather than the interviewee? If so, are you a tiger, a creampuff, or somewhere in between?

Once I was on an interview panel for the City. It was for a general clerical classification, and our job wasn't to select candidates for a particular job but rather to screen them so they could be ranked on a list (bureaucracy!). I think I was nice enough, although one of the two other interviewers actually fell asleep during one of the interviews. I had to step on her foot (accidentally of course) to try to wake her up discreetly.

3. Do phone interviews make you more or less nervous than in-person ones?

Never had one, but I generally am not a fan of the conference call. I like to see people when I speak with them, especially for something as important as an interview.

4. What was the best advice you ever got to prepare for an interview? How about the worst?

The best advice was from a book, the title of which I have long forgotten. Rather than giving you tips on how to anticipate what types of questions you might face, it suggested you spend your preparation time deciding what YOU want to tell THEM. Then it gave you tips on how to spin your particular message into any question, without it seeming like you were dodging the question. It worked pretty well actually.

Worst advice? Can't really recall. It's all such a blur at this point.

5. Do you have any pre-interview rituals that give you confidence?

When I started my discernment type meetings with the groovy sisters - which are a kindler gentler form of interview I suppose but much more important - I accidentally started the ritual of getting my hair cut nice and short before an interview. Made my head feel lighter, helped me stand taller, and it's always good to think you look nice.

Well, now that interview contemplation is over I'm going downstairs to bake. One of my housemates here showed me the secret to scones, so I'm going to whip up another batch. Then I'm going to make some of my cranberry almond biscotti as a thank you gift for another Sister who has been my tour guide on all those history trips. We're actually going on another history trip today, this one closer to home here in London.

Peace to you all. Have a good day.

Cookie Update

Not 24 hours after the aforementioned chocolate chip cookies were delivered with a smile to our maintenance staff, they rang our doorbell and arrived to (finally) fix something that's been broken for ages.

I'm sure the cookies were just a reminder that we exist, rather than holding any magic powers!

cookies

Tonight after dinner I made a batch of chocolate chip cookies. I'm planning to give them to the maintenance guys who keep our physical plant up and running here at east coast groovy hq. That way they won't be around the house saying "eat me!", and next time we need the guys to fix something perhaps they will remember us fondly and act swiftly! Some may call this bribery, but I call this a perfect arrangement. I get the pleasure of baking, they get the pleasure of eating. ;)

I love baking in general, but there's something about making a batch of chocolate chip cookies. My current recipe is based on the Nestle Toll House recipe, with a few variations and twists of my own. I always hand cream the butter and sugar (good for getting any residual frustrations out) and always use frozen butter that has been recently thawed so it's still really cold. Somehow this makes the cookies better in the end. (In High School I swore by the Hershey's Chocolate Town Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe, but always used Nestle chips.)

Aside from working out frustrations by hand creaming, I also find there's a centering effect to baking cookies. After I get the dough just so, I carefully measure out each cookie and place it on the baking sheet. Into the oven go the cookies while I wait 10 minutes for them to be baked to perfection. I take them out for 2 minutes, then carefully use the spatula to transfer them to the cooling racks. I then repeat the whole process for 3 more batches.

There's something about the incremental periods of waiting and activity that soothes me. Not to mention the smell of delicious chocolaty goodness that pervades the kitchen.